“Upset?” she gasped. “Ten minutes ago we were having dinner. Suddenly everyone in the world is chasing my husband, firing guns! You want to know upset? You’re looking at a multimillion-dollar civil lawsuit for the unnecessary use of force by two government agencies, reckless pursuit, and reckless endangerment of the lives of innocent bystanders. You and your cowboys just stirred up a shitstorm, Agent.”
“Mrs. Chapman, we have a fully authorized warrant for your husband’s arrest. As to the guns, we weren’t authorized to kill, but we were permitted to wound if necessary, and we didn’t even do that.”
Claire shook her head, laughed, and pulled her cell phone out of her purse. She extended the antenna and began punching numbers. “You might want to have a better story prepared for the Herald and the Globe,” she said. “You obviously have the wrong man, and you just screwed up royally.”
“If we have the wrong man,” Massie replied quietly, “why did he run?”
“Obviously because you guys were in hot pursuit…” She faltered, depressed the END button. “All right, what’s your point?”
“You see,” Massie said, “you don’t want to do that. You don’t want to call the media.”
“Oh, I don’t, do I?”
“Once it’s out of the bottle, you can’t put it back in. You may not want this made public. We’ll have any police report sealed, and we’ll do our best to quash any media coverage. You’d better pray you weren’t recognized.”
“Mommy,” Annie said in a high, frightened voice, “I want to go home.”
“Just a couple of minutes, sweetie,” Claire said, reaching around to give Annie a quick one-armed hug. To Massie, she snapped: “What exactly are you referring to?”
“Your husband, Ronald Kubik, is wanted for murder.”
For a long moment Claire was speechless. “Now I know you have the wrong man,” she said at last. She smiled in relief. “My husband is Tom Chapman.”
“That’s not his real name,” Massie said. He pointed to a cheap-looking white conference table. “Why don’t we sit down?”
Claire took a seat across the table from Massie. Annie at first sat in a chair next to Claire’s, then slid off it onto the floor and began inspecting the underside of the table.
“And even if you do mean my husband, Tom,” Claire said, “who’s he supposed to have murdered?”
“I’m sorry, we’re not authorized to say. Mrs. Chapman, or should I say Professor Heller, believe me, we know who you are. We’re aware of your reputation. We’re being extremely careful here. But what do you know about your husband’s background? What has he told you?”
“I know everything,” she said. “You’ve got the wrong guy.”
Massie nodded and smiled sympathetically. “What you know is his legend, his created biography. Happy childhood in southern California, Claremont College, worked as a broker, moved to Boston, started his own investment firm here. Right?”
She narrowed her eyes, nodded. “‘Legend?’”
“You ever check with Claremont College?” he asked.
She shook her head. “What are you implying?”
“I’m not implying anything. And, frankly, I can’t tell you much at all. But your husband, Ron Kubik, has been a fugitive from justice for thirteen years.”
“That’s the name you guys called him out there,” she said thickly, her heart thudding. “I’ve never heard it before.”
“He hasn’t told you anything about his past?”
“Either this is some colossal mistake, or you guys are framing him. I know how you guys work. Tom is not a murderer.”
“Three days ago you had a burglary at your home in Cambridge,” the FBI man said. “The local police ran all the fingerprints in your house, which is standard procedure these days, put them into AFIS, the computerized Automated Fingerprint Identification System, and your husband’s prints came up flagged. They’ve been on the system for years, waiting for him to commit some crime, or get fingerprinted for some other reason. Bad break for your husband. Lucky for us the Cambridge police were so thorough.”
She shook her head. “My husband wasn’t even home at the time,” she said. “He didn’t give the cops his prints.”
“The police ran all the fingerprints in the house in order to eliminate everyone who wasn’t the suspect. Naturally your husband’s prints turned up,” Massie said. “We came close this time. Unfortunately, a few minutes ago, we lost him somewhere in the parking garage. Your husband has disappeared before, and he’ll try it again. But this time it won’t work. We’ve got him.”
Her mouth went dry. She felt her heartbeat accelerate. “You don’t know who you’re messing with,” she said with a small, hollow laugh.
“He’ll get in touch with you,” Massie said. “He needs you. And when he does, we’ll be watching.”
CHAPTER THREE
Claire found the car in the mall parking garage, just where she’d left it, almost expecting to find Tom crouched in the back seat, or at least something there, some sort of sign from him. A note on the dashboard, or slipped under the windshield-wiper blade. But nothing. Their Volvo station wagon was empty.
For a few minutes, she sat still, breathing heavily, trying to regain control. The reality of what had just happened-or, rather, the unreality of it-was just beginning to sink in. While Annie sat in the back seat, licking at an ice-cream cone, her fright apparently having subsided, Claire’s thoughts were in turmoil. What had she just witnessed? If Massie was lying to her, as she assumed, then why had Tom run away? And where had he learned to do such things?
There was a car phone in the Volvo, and as she drove out of the parking garage toward Cambridge, she half expected it to ring, but nothing.
Where had he gone? Was he all right?
Their house was an enormous Georgian, saved from grandeur only by an unruly ramblingness, a series of additions slapped on by a succession of previous owners. It was on Gray Gardens East, in the toniest part of Cambridge. Even a good distance away, as soon as she had turned the corner, Claire could see the stroboscopic flash of blue light, the unaccustomed buzz of late-night activity that she realized was coming from their driveway. She felt her stomach twist and turn over.
The front door was open.
Looking closer, she saw that it had actually been taken off its hinges. Dread roiled her stomach. She parked the car, grabbed Annie, and ran toward the door.
Inside the house, men were everywhere, opening drawers and carting off cardboard boxes of papers. Some wore suits and trench coats; others were in dark-blue FBI windbreakers.
Annie burst into tears and choked out, “Why are these men in here?”
Claire stroked her back as they entered the foyer. “Nothing to worry about, my baby.” Then she yelled out, “All right, who’s in charge here?”
A man in a gray suit and trench coat emerged from the kitchen: tall, with a thatch of brown hair that was obviously colored, a few shades too dark, and a matching brown mustache. He held out a leather ID wallet. “Special Agent Crawford, FBI,” he said.
“Where’s your search warrant?” she demanded.
He glowered at her, then reluctantly reached into the breast pocket of his suit and pulled out a few sheets of paper, which he handed to her.
She looked them over. The first one, the authorization to search their house, seemed to be in order. It not only gave the correct address but described the appearance of the house. It also gave a ridiculously long list of items they were looking for, a laundry list so long, detailed, and comprehensive that it couldn’t possibly leave out a thing. Telephone records, airline tickets, bus or train tickets, any notes concerning times of flights and train departures, out-of-state newspapers, advertisements, any notes pertaining to such that might be found in the trash, in Tom’s files, among his personal possessions… It went on and on.